All out for the Environmental Day of Struggle on 9 December!
Become active in the streets, in factories and neighborhoods! Protest in front of the centers of those responsible - monopolies, banks and imperialist politics! The revolutionary answer is socialism!
The destruction of the environment has developed to the beginning of a global environmental catastrophe. The imperialist world system is to blame, so threatening the existence of the working class and the oppressed of the world as well as all non-human living creatures. We mourn the countless victims of this development, as recently in Libya with more than 11,000 fatalities. The international monopolies engage in their overexploitation of humanity and nature all around the world, in imperialist countries and in those that are dependent on imperialism. It is the mining companies like Glencore, Rio Tinto and Anglo American, oil and chemical monopolies like Exxon Mobile and BP, agro- and chemical monopolies like Monsanto, Bayer or DuPont or automotive monopolies like General Motors, Stellantis or Ford. Presently the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East intensify the environmental destruction with devastating results for human beings and nature, with thousands of fatalities and regional environmental catastrophes. The bombing of power plants, of factories of the chemical and heavy industry lead to the pollution of the air, ground and water. The foundations of life of the masses in the Gaza Strip are threatened existentially and inhumanly by the brutal bombing and ground offensive of the Israeli army. The atomic weapon arsenal of the participating states alone have the potential to eradicate all of humanity.
The cause of this global ecological catastrophe is the imperialist world system! It can only be stopped by overcoming it through revolution. In his early writings Karl Marx already wrote: "Communism … is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man ... Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." 1
Under the influence of reformism and economism, this deep insight was displaced for a long time in the revolutionary and working-class movement. The ICOR has expressed itself critically and self-critically to these grave omissions and since then stands in international union against the imperialist exploitation of humanity and nature along in the front line!
All over the world people are becoming active against the destruction of the environment. "System change, not climate change!" became the call of a new climate movement, especially of the young generation, which developed in almost all countries in the last years. Against all attempts to play off the struggle for jobs against the environmental struggle, workers more and more often also put forward demands for the protection of nature in their struggles and connect this struggle with their struggles for jobs, higher wages and workplace safety! They are forming alliances with the struggles of indigenous peoples and small farmers, who are being forced off their land to conduct destructive open-pit mining.
Today many of these struggles are increasingly developing an anti-imperialist direction and are taking course towards a united international struggle with a visible anti-imperialist and antifascist character. The founding of the International Anti-Imperialist United Front against Fascism, War and Environmental Destruction (in short: United Front) shows the great struggle potential of the union between the working-class and the environmental movement.
The established environmental movement, which placed its hope in negotiations with states and international institutions, has failed. Its involvement in the World Climate Summits aims only at giving legitimacy to greenwashed imperialism. Those sitting together in Dubai at COP28 are the representatives of the environmentally destructive monopolies from different sectors and states, who are responsible for the ecological catastrophe, and some NGOs directly involved in greenwashing, which do everything they can to discredit the revolutionary alternative with anticommunism. The head of the COP28 is, of all people, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, head of the state-owned oil company Adnoc of the United Arab Emirates.
Determined calls for a boycott of COP28 and announced protests all over the world show that more and more people realize that the environmental catastrophe cannot be remedied by its systematic imperialist perpetrators who aim at sustaining the system by all means.
ICOR stands for the active society-changing struggle of the broad masses against all illusions in bourgeois reform programs. However, we also fight against all fatalism and alarmism. Only the determined struggle for socialism can reconsolidate the unity of humanity and nature, while imperialism inevitably destroys the natural foundations of human life. The broad masses also experience this in form of rising costs and inferior quality of all essential necessities.
ICOR calls for the conducting 9 December as a worldwide day of struggle. Carry out broad educational work! Form alliances! Organize protests! Demonstrate and fight on the streets, in the neighborhoods and factories. Increase the organization of the masses in this issue! National and continental focal points can also set important signals! Apply to participate in the protest delegations to Colombia2 and Dubai3!
Our internationalist slogan applies:
The international working class must take the lead in a society-changing environmental struggle! Organize numerous people, especially youth, in the revolutionary parties and strengthen the ICOR and the Anti-Imperialist United Front against Fascism, War and Environmental Destruction.
Long live the anti-imperialist struggle of the working class and the oppressed against the environmental catastrophe!
Determined struggle for socialism to save humanity!
Forward with the ICOR and the United Front!
Signatories (as of 20 November 2023, further signatories possible):
PCPCI Parti Communiste Proletarien de Côte d'Ivoire (Proletarian Communist Party of Ivory Coast)
UPC-Manidem Union des Populations du Cameroun - Manifeste National pour l’Instauration de la Démocratie (Union of Populations of Cameroon - National Manifesto for the Establishment of Democracy)
CPK Communist Party of Kenya
MMLPL Moroccan Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Line
CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)
PCT Parti Comuniste du Togo (Communist Party of Togo)
PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia
SPB Socialist Party of Bangladesh
NCP (Mashal) Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)
PPRF Patriotic Peoples Republican Front of Nepal
CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
БКП Българска Комунистическа Партия (Bulgarian Communist Party)
PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)
MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)
UC Unité Communiste (Communist United ), France
UPML Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France
KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)
RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands
UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)
MLP Marksistsko-Leninskaja Platforma (Marxist-Leninist Platform), Russia
RMP Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party)
MLGS Marxistisch-Leninistische Gruppe Schweiz (Marxist-Leninist Group of Switzerland)
TKP-ML Türkiye Komünist Partisi – Marksist-Leninist (Communist Party of Turkey – Marxist-Leninist)
MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)
KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine
UMU Union of Maoists of the Urals (Union of Maoists of the Urals), Russia
UoC Union of Cypriots, Cyprus
PCC-M Partido Comunista de Colombia – Maoista (Communist Party of Colombia - Maoist)
OAPCM Organización Apoyante del Partido Comunista de México (Supporting Organization of the Communist Party of Mexico)
PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent))
PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic
PCR-U Partido Comunista Revolucionario del Uruguay (Revolutionary Communist Party of Uruguay)
BP (NK-T) Bolşevik Parti (Kuzey Kürdistan-Türkiye) (Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan-Turkey))
ORC Organisation Révolutionnaire du Congo (Revolutionary Organization of Congo), Democratic Republic of the Congo
Additional Signatories (Non-ICOR):
SUCI(C)/Indien
1“Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,“ in Marx/Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 296-297
2 ICOR follows the call of climate and environmental organizations to organize an alternative conference and mass protests in Colombia and the entire world on 9 December this year. It calls all its members to come to Casanare/Colombia on 9 December!
3 ICOR will also protest there and make its positions visible!